Back in October, Commissioner Catherine Conklin, a junior judge from Utah’s 2nd District, gave an impassioned defense of free speech and open courtrooms.
“There is a presumption in favor of the courts being open,” Commissioner Conklin said during this hearing.
There is that presumption, at least in the US.
Commissioner Conklin was in a difficult position. She isn’t a very good judge and she had done- and continues to do- a great job of destroying the family she was presiding over.
Opening courtrooms would only expose her incompetence and corruption to the world.
Since September 2022, the case she was presiding over- Barnett V Barnett- had spun out of control mainly because she decided to create chaos.
She changed custody, giving sole custody to James Barnett, who is definitely verbally abusive to his children while being accused of physical and sexual abuse as well. Some of the verbal abuse is below.
The results of this haphazard decision were as expected.
James Barnett seems to want desperately to join the Guinness Book of World Records.
Since September, he has called the police on his children at least four times: the last being Monday December 12, 2022.
That date also happened to be the same date for the latest hearing in this case.
James, according to one of the kids, not only wrestled him to the floor but then threatened to send him to a camp for troubled youths, “James and the slug went into my room and took things, so I went in there’s {sic} and grabbed things and then James and then James threw me on the bed and him and the slug held me down and were grabbing me.”
Yes, his children call him by his first name.
The child continued.
Archway Youth Center is a camp in Utah for troubled kids.
Mind you, this all happened on the morning of December 12, with the hearing scheduled in the afternoon.
This is at least the fourth call made to police since September 2022, when James got custody.
The third, occurring on November 18, is still being investigated by the Weber County Sheriff’s Office, and, as such, a police report has yet to be released. Parts of the police report of the first and second are below.
With all that drama as the setup, a recording of this hearing- on December 12- would have made sense if for nothing else but to capture the drama.
Alas, it was not meant to be- Commissioner Conklin may have stood up for open courtrooms in October but those were empty words.
Not only was this hearing in person, blocking me from watching it, but she blocked most observers and demanded that everyone attending hand in their cell phones.
Then, the first half hour or so was completely in the dark.
She took off with the lawyers for both sides in a session off the record.
After that discussion, most of the rest of the hearing was perfunctory.
She let go of the guardian ad litem, Jessica Read- a smart move because Ms. Read doesn’t seem very competent. Check out some of her work starting about a minute in from a previous hearing.
Not to worry, Commissioner Conklin still finds plenty of need for court services. There will be a new guardian ad litem, not named yet, but also, she has ordered the family into nearly every type of therapy available.
I guess she can’t figure out why her little experiment of forcing children to live with an abuser is not going smoothly yet.
She did order that mom get a little more time with the children. Currently, her oldest lives with her full time, while the three youngest live nearly full time with their father.
She has now ordered that the three youngest spend Wednesdays with her while her younger son spend every second weekend with her.
If she picked this arrangement out of a hat, it would not surprise me because it would not have been any more random while lacking any logic if she did.
Given her stellar performance on this case, it’s no surprise that she’s up for a promotion. She is now a finalist to be a full judge in her district.
I don’t know any of the other candidates, and I can only hope none are worse than her. As such, please consider sending an email to the email address at the bottom of the screen shot to alert the committee to Commissioner Conklin’s performance in this case.
Judges are chosen in much the same excellent manner in Utah as they are in St. Louis County, Missouri where the lovely and talented Elaine Pudlowski nearly became a judge.
In this case, a committee chosen by the governor nominated four candidates and those four names will be sent to the Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, a Republican.
I have previously written about how the process for choosing judges is extremely poor and this is a main reason why we wind up with so many bad judges.
I reached out to James Barnett and his attorney, Sydney Mateus, but I received no response.
Post Script
Find my previous articles on this case: article one, article two, article three, article four, and article five.